


Starting at the End

by LunarDaydreams



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood?, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Gideon being a creep, Implied sale of humans by magical creatures, Magic-Users, Magical creatures treating humans like property, Memory Loss, Mind Control, Mystery, Protective Siblings, Sibling Bonding, Surreal, The kids are magic, pacifica has abusive parents, self-harm due to mind control and or possession, sort of magic-auish?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 08:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3684978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunarDaydreams/pseuds/LunarDaydreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been one year since their trip to Gravity Falls, and Dipper and Mabel are sure it was just the same boring routine all summer. A chance encounter with a witch and a series of strange nightmares, however, prove that not everything was as it seemed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Market

For what felt like the hundredth time since summer’s end, Dipper woke up with a jolt and fell unceremoniously out of bed.  
  
He landed shoulder-first with a grunt, pain flaring up his shoulder and arm before he was even conscious of what was happening. It took him about a solid minute of staring at the ceiling to process that he was awake, that his nightmare had ended, and that he was home, safe in his room. Dipper took a deep breath and shut his eyes, rubbing them tiredly, trying to make sense of his most recent nightmare.  
  
Despite how vivid the dreams were while he slept, Dipper never remembered much of them in the morning. Although in the dream he knew he could feel everything with frightening realism, they’d faded to nothingness by the time he woke up. Usually, he didn’t get to retain more than a few disjointed images or a phrase or two; tonight it was a huge eye watching him, blue flame, and an echoing voice warning him: _“I’ll be watching you.”_  
  
Dipper shivered and opened his eyes. He rubbed his shoulder as he sat up, quickly looking over at Mabel’s bed. He wasn’t sure if he was checking that his sister was alright or checking that he hadn’t woken her up again; maybe it was both. Regardless, she was both still steadily sleeping and perfectly unharmed. There was always about a fifty-fifty chance of waking her up when he had these nightmares; he’d feel bad if he kept her from getting enough rest on the last day of school. For some reason, she really liked the whole yearbook-signing ritual.  
  
Satisfied she was still asleep, he looked at the clock. Seven thirty-- only a few more minutes until the alarm went off for school anyway. At least this time he wasn’t going to have to stare at the ceiling until the sun rose.  
  
Late tomorrow they’d be back in Gravity Falls for the summer, and he wouldn’t have to deal with paying attention to class after a nightmare. He just had to make it through today.  


* * *

  
At lunch time, Mabel startled him out of his book by plopping down beside him.  
  
“Hey brobro! Whatcha readin’?”  
  
“Just a mystery novel.” He looked up to see her wide, braces-filled grin. She was holding onto a canvas, probably from her art class, and practically bouncing in her seat. “What’s got you in such a good mood?”  
  
“My teacher said my painting was the best in class! I got an A+ for the assignment!” She gave him a wider grin, with an expectant undertone. She wanted to show it off, but was waiting for him to ask.  
  
He shut his book, set it down, knowing better than to deny her, and said,  “Awesome! Can I see?” It wasn’t even forced. Mabel was a talented artist, even if the things she drew were pretty strange sometimes.  
  
“Ta-dah!” She turned the canvas around to show him, practically bursting with pride. Dipper froze.  
  
She’d painted stars, a pretty stream of them surrounded in lights of every shade of the rainbow, set in an upside down triangle rimmed with lights.  
  
_Mabel let go of the button, her relaxed arms drifting up as she drifted farther away from the ground. Her hair billowed upward, streaming behind her as she came to a stop right in the centre of the multi-coloured swirling lights and the galaxy visible through that ring of light._  
  
The flash of images faded just as abruptly as it had arrived. He recognized it as part of his dream, but unlike the events in his dreams, he remembered this with absolute clarity. His heart was racing, like it had been every time he’d woken from that particular nightmare. He felt scared, betrayed, and angry all at the same time, with no idea why.  
  
“Dipper? Are you okay?”  
  
He snapped back to reality with a jump, blinking repeatedly to try to remember what was going on. Mabel had set the painting down, leaning forward to look at him with concern. “Huh?”  
  
“You totally blanked for a second. Are you okay? Is my painting that bad?”  
  
“Wha--- no, it’s fine it’s,” he paused. “It looks great Mabel.” It wasn’t a lie; her painting was beautiful. “I just… didn’t sleep well last night.”  
  
_‘Trust no one’_ , a part of him said, though he didn’t know where the thought had come from. But another part cut in, _‘Tell Mabel.’_  
  
Not at school, though. He met her concerned, somewhat disbelieving gaze. “I’ll tell you when we’re home,” he said. That satisfied her, and she gave him a quick hug-- one of those tight ones where she smooshed their cheeks together affectionately, before backing up. He made a face at her, cheeks red. He glanced around quickly to make sure nobody was staring at him-- at the loser kid whose sister still hugged him in public.  
  
Nobody was looking.  
  
“Do you want me to sit with you?” Mabel asked. Dipper glanced at the table where her friends sat, waiting for her to come back. It was the last day of class, and he’d have the rest of the summer to spend with his sister.  
  
A part of him really did want her to sit with him, but he shook his head. “Nah, your friends will kill me if I take away their last lunch period with you.”  
  
“Alright, see you in class brobro!” She hurried back to her friends, painting in hand.  
  
Dipper pulled his book back up to his face, but he didn’t read another word of it the whole lunch period.  


* * *

  
He was distracted in class and grateful there wasn’t really anything to do on the last day besides sign the school yearbook. He hadn’t bothered to buy one, since he only had a few friends, none of them close. Mabel, though, was swarmed with people signing her yearbook, people hugging her tightly, whining about how unfair it was that they didn’t get to see her for a whole summer since she was going back to Gravity Falls, and people who would be going to a different high school after this, promising to keep in touch.  
  
The teacher had given up any pretense of teaching and just let the students talk, while Dipper fidgeted and tried to occupy his time. He couldn’t focus on a book, both because of the noise and because of the thoughts occupying his head, so he pulled out a piece of paper and tapped his pen on the paper, staring off into space.  
  
“Hey Dipper, whatcha writing?” Mabel’s voice cut into his absentminded staring.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
Mabel pulled the paper over, blinking, and asked, “What’s with the gibberish?”  
  
“What?” He pulled the paper back and looked down. It looked like he’d been hitting a keyboard. He had apparently just been writing random letters.  
  
KS vl bokilbqu, ony hykvx lg ah thykv hshvhs.  
Mfa ltys gh wsdkquhf oxkcik mm lg ght zrzi.  
  
What the hell did that mean?  
  
“I don’t know, I guess I was just writing stuff,” Dipper said hesitantly.  
  
“Like doodling but with letters?”  
  
“Yeah. Like doodlin but with letters. Y’know, not paying attention and all that.”  
  
Mabel nodded, then poked him, “Where’s your yearbook? I wanna sign it.”  
  
“I didn’t buy one.” He shook his head. “Besides, I can read yours if I ever feel the need to remember the days of terrible school lunches.”  
  
She puffed out her cheeks, as if affronted by the idea that the only memories of school were the lunches, before pulling out her own yearbook. She’d added extra pages to accommodate the signatures, and now she added another few, writing ‘Dipper’s Yearbook Signatures’ in a glittery pen. She picked out a bright pink, sparkly pen, and started to sign it, tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth as she concentrated.  
  
‘Hey bro, happy end of school! I want you to know you’re still the best brother in the world even if you’re a grumpygrump not partaking in the end of school ritual! Come on Dipper, it’s our last year of middle school! Celebrate!’ She signed it with her name, a smiley face, a little shooting star, and a pine tree.  
  
Something tickled the back of his mind, like he was forgetting something but had no idea what he was forgetting.  
  
“There!” Satisfied, Mabel flashed him another wide grin and went back into the throng of fellow students. “Hey, Dipper’s gonna share my yearbook, so I added some pages for him!”  
  
“Wait! Mabel-- ugh, nevermind.” Dipper just buried his head in his arms to hide his reddening face. Luckily, it was only ten minutes before the bell rang. The rest of the eighth grade class cheered loudly and scrambled out. He lagged behind, taking his time to put his things away. He folded the paper he’d been writing on and stuck it in his pocket, instead of his backpack.  
  
“Ready to go home?” Mabel asked once she was done putting her yearbook in her bedazzled backpack.  
  
“Yeah, come on.”  
  
He led the way out of the school, through the halls, and outside. They lived close enough to walk home instead of taking the school bus, so they soon were free of the crowds of people.  
  
“So… you were gonna talk to me about you blanking out, right?” Mabel asked when they were a good distance away from the school.  
  
“Yeah, I-- hey, do you see that?” Dipper stopped. It was just a little thing, something that shouldn’t have caught his attention at all.  
  
There was a long shadow in the alley. One that didn’t seem to be cast by anything at all. Judging by the angle of the shadow, there should have been something right in the middle of the road.  
  
But there wasn’t.  
  
“See what?” Mabel asked, looking in the direction he was staring.  
  
“That shadow. It looks weird…” He started walking towards it, following it up to the base of where it ought to be.  
  
“Oh hey, you’re right. Weird, I never noticed before.” Mabel hurried to catch up with him. She slipped her hand into his wordlessly as Dipper squinted at where, rightfully, there should have been something.  
  
Hesitantly, he reached out. His fingers didn’t meet anything solid, but it was like dunking his hand in cool water. Just barely any resistance.  
  
For a brief moment, something flickered into view. Mabel gave a start, her grip tightening on his hand, but she didn’t move. It was a signpost, pointing back the way they came and bearing the word ‘market’. After a few seconds, it flickered back out of view.  
  
“Whoa… what was that?” Mabel breathed.  
  
“I don’t know…” But he turned in the direction it had pointed. “But I want to find out.”  
  
He relaxed his hand for a moment, giving her the chance to let go and just go on home without him, but she didn’t. She started walking with him.  
  
He wasn't sure what he was looking for or what was going on, but curiosity drove him onward.  
  
If he was honest with himself though, it was more than simple curiosity. He didn't know how to describe the feeling, but he felt like he had to keep going.  
  
They were back at the middle school when he spotted another shadow with no origin and pointed it out to Mabel. She tried to touch it when they approached, and it reacted instantly, not even flickering this time as it came into view, still pointing onwards with the word "market" on it.  
  
"These are magic, right?" Mabel questioned.  
  
"They have to be." It sounds like one of his conspiracy theories. Like the times he stayed up for three nights in a row and became convinced their cat was an alien. But there was no Mabel telling him to go to sleep, prying his shirt out of his mouth and then bodily dragging him to their room when he whined.  
  
They'd been closer this year, but Mabel could be counted on to tell him when he was being ridiculous.  
  
But she was experimentally poking the signpost, watching it fade in and out of existence.  
  
"Let's keep following it." He tugged her away before she could get too thoroughly distracted. This one led between the school and nearby buildings, towards the park.  
  
He looked for another signpost, but there was no sign of one. They both searched for about five minutes before Dipper noticed movement.  
  
He turned, staring at the two trees that stood alone in this part of the park. Nothing there.  
  
Dipper made to turn away again, but as soon as the trees left his direct vision, he began to see things moving out of the corner of his eye. “Hey Mabel,” he waved her back over. “I think I found something.”  
  
“What? Trees?” Mabel blinked at them.  
  
“No, don’t look at them directly,” He nudged her to turn her head. “Sorta look at them with your peripheral vision.”  
  
“... Are there _people_ back there?”  
  
“One way to find out.” Dipper grabbed her hand and started forward, stepping cautiously through the trees. Nothing happened.  
  
He backed up. “Maybe we need to activate it. Like touching the signposts.”  
  
“Poke the trees? I can poke the trees,” Mabel reached out to one. “Boop.”  
  
She jumped back, because the moment she touched the tree the bark began to glow, and then the other tree began to glow too. The space between the trunks shimmered and shifted, before revealing a bustling market beyond.  
  
Those definitely weren’t humans beyond. Not most of them, anyway. Dipper turned to see if anyone else in the park had noticed, but they hadn’t. The children carried on playing, the adults carried on supervising, and none of them noticed the portal they’d just opened up to some sort of magical marketplace.  
  
The smart thing to do at this point would have been to turn back. At the very least to do some research and observe for a while before making any moves. He always got after Mabel for being too curious, for not thinking things through before she got into trouble, for eating things that weren’t necessarily edible or talking to strangers or petting animals she didn’t know.  
  
What he’d never really realized was that he could be just as reckless at times.  
  
_‘We’re just going to look.’_ He told himself, stepping through the trees with Mabel trailing behind, letting him lead her by the hand.  
  
A rush of noise hit his ears. Chatter in more languages than he could count, coming from every direction and making him almost dizzy. Beings pushed through the crowd, looking at the wares as stall owners tried to strike deals or catch a passerby’s attention. Most of the stalls were made of wood, bearing colourful signs overhead.  
  
In many ways, it seemed like any old farmer’s market.  
  
Except only a few looked to be human. To his right a family of tiny little people with grey skin, mottled and wrinkled like a prune, wearing little hoods were haggling over a supply of honeycomb. Further down, six little men with beards and pointed hats were arguing with a shopkeeper, while brightly glowing fairies fluttered overhead.  
  
On top of that, there was a lot more in the way of smoke and flashing lights from the wares.  
  
“Whoa…” Mabel breathed. “This looks like something out of a fairy tale.”  
  
“That might not be a good thing,” Dipper swallowed. Now that he was actually in here, self preservation was battling very hard with his curiosity. Curiosity still won. “Be careful okay? We should stick together.” He paused, looking around the market again apprehensively. “It’s probably really easy to get lost here.”  
  
“Okay!”  
  
They picked their way through the crowd, looking at the wares for sale. There were displays of herbs he couldn’t identify; spellbooks and expensive-looking leatherbound journals; cats, owls, rabbits, frogs, horses, and even a couple unicorns; and the most impressive spread of fruits he’d ever seen. He saw brightly coloured apples, oranges, melons and berries, as well as more uncommon fruits he couldn’t name. Some of the fruits didn’t even look like ones you could buy in a human grocery store; one of them was smoking lightly, while another that looked vaguely like a watermelon was changing colour regularly.  
  
Mabel tried to go over to the fruit stand, but Dipper tugged her back. Most stories had a general consensus that eating magical food had bad results. She pouted at him, but didn’t try for any of the fruit again.  
  
Many of the beings flittering around the marketplace were too busy to notice them, but a few stopped to stare at the two human children making their way through the crowd of magical creatures.  
  
“Ooh, there’s yarn over here,” Mabel turned to veer off towards one of the stalls, manned by a giant.  
  
“Mabel, don’t touch anything!” He hissed, tugging her back.  
  
“I wasn’t going--”  
  
Dipper tripped over something as he stepped backwards, knocking them both straight into the stall behind him. He heard the stall owner shriek; there was a crunch of wood as the fairly flimsy table broke, sending trinkets and potion bottles clattering to the ground. The bottles shattered, releasing dizzying, multicoloured fumes into the air.  
  
“You brats! You’ve ruined my stall!”  
  
“W--we’re sorry, it was an accident!” Dipper stuttered an octave higher than normal, shrinking under the glare of the old woman. She _looked_ human, just like a tall old woman with wrinkled skin, deep frown lines and short permed hair. A pendant around her neck began to glow blue, followed by her eyes.  
  
Around them, the market began to whisper.  
  
“Human children?”  
  
“How did they get in here?”  
  
“Did someone lead them?”  
  
“Maybe they led themselves. Look how bright the girl shines.”  
  
“They smell of magic. ”  
  
Mabel managed to get to her feet and pulled Dipper up as well, gripping his arm just above his elbow. “Dipper, they’re all looking at us.”  
  
“I hope you have the means to pay for this!” The old woman shouted at them. The glowing eyes were really starting to freak him out, and now the woman was faintly glowing all around, her hair rising up slightly as if suddenly weightless.  
  
“I--I… w--we have a little bit of cash. We can try to fix it! Mabel’s good at making things.”  
  
“Yeah I could make you a new, better stall--”  
  
The woman took another step towards them. Dipper felt Mabel’s grip on his arm grow tighter as they backed away in response. “These potions took years to make. No mortal cash or repaired stall can fix that!”  
  
“We’re sorry!” Mabel said, her voice a little higher as well. “W--we’re really really sorry ma’am! We didn’t mean to--”  
  
The glowing old lady whirled to look at the surrounding folk. “They have damaged my property. Do these humans belong to anyone?”  
  
There was nothing but silence from the crowd.  
  
“Then these are unclaimed and untrained humans. I take it there are no challengers for my rights to them?” Her hand glowed brighter, raised up in front of her. It was as if she were threatening, daring anyone to protest. The crowd didn’t move.  
  
“Rights to-- what do you mean?” Dipper backed up again, instinctively nudging Mabel slightly behind him.  
  
“I am taking you children as payment for breaking my wares.” The woman said, raising her hand at them. There was a flash of light, and Dipper flinched back. He heard Mabel yelp and her hands suddenly weren’t on his arm anymore.  
  
Instead, blue light had wrapped around their wrists, holding them firmly together in front of them. The hairs on Dipper’s arms were raised, the skin closest to the light prickling like coming into contact with static. Mabel squirmed beside him, trying to pull her wrists apart, but the light held firm.  
  
“Come along now, children.” The woman said with a wicked grin, voice like poisoned honey. She turned to her stall with a raised, glowing hand. The unbroken wares packed themselves up, the broken table vanishing. She kept walking, plucking the bag of wares out of mid air. The magic twined around their wrists forced the twins forward.  
  
“Dipper, what do we do?” Mabel whispered to him. “How do we get out of this?”  
  
“I don’t know!” He whispered back. “I--it’s not like we’ve ever been kidnapped by a witch before.”  
  
“Well what do they do in fairytales? Trick the witch right?”  
  
“Yeah but how are we going to do that? We don’t even know what she wants with us.”  
  
Mabel gasped quietly, eyes wide. “Is she going to eat us?”  
  
“What? Mabel, no, she’s not gonna eat us.”  
  
“The witch in the candy house tried to eat the kids!”  
  
“Yeah but…” Dipper wasn’t even remotely sure the witch wasn’t going to eat them. He searched for a way to convince Mabel otherwise, anyway, so she wouldn’t latch onto the idea. “Maybe she just wants some help with yard work or something.”  
  
Mabel raised her eyebrows dubiously. Dipper grimaced, looking away from her. “Okay, no, I know, you’re right, that was dumb,” he continued hurriedly. “I’m just saying, she probably isn’t going to eat us.”  
  
“Probably?” She echoed.  
  
“Yes. Probably.” He looked away quickly, trying to think. There had to be a way out of this. He looked around. They were still in the park, but all the humans they’d seen in it before going through the trees had vanished. Instead, there were now several large stone rocks with carvings at the edges of the streets. He could see a glowing line connecting them, clearly the barriers of this place. It was like they were out of phase. He swallowed. “Hey, witch lady!”  
  
The witch stopped, turning to glare at him. “Do not call me ‘witch lady’, child.”  
  
“Where are you taking us?” He demanded. He tugged against the magic binding his wrists, seeing if he could slow down at all. No use, if simply forced him forward as if the witch was pulling on a rope. “And what are you going to do to us?”  
  
“Are you going to eat us?” Mabel blurted. “We probably taste horrible!”  
  
“I’m not going to eat you, children. I’m not a cannibal,” the witch rolled her eyes. “Your lives are to repay me for what you broke, and meat is not that expensive.”  
  
“So what are you going to do to us?” Dipper pressed. The witch began walking again, finding a good empty spot of grass, forcing them to hold still in the middle while she unraveled yarn from a spool in a circle around them.  
  
“I’m taking you back to my home, and then I will determine how much you’re worth.” She finished with the string, snipping off the end with a small pair of scissors from her belt and tying it, before she joined them in the middle of the circle, gripping both of their shoulders hard enough to bruise.  
  
The yarn glowed the same blue as her pendant, and the space at their feet began to glow too. In a few more moments, neither of them could see anything because of the bright light.  
  
When it cleared, they stood in the living room of an old home. It looked deceptively like a little old lady’s house in some ways, with a red and yellow crocheted blanket over the faded cream couch and an old but serviceable television.  
  
In other ways, it was nothing like a normal woman’s house. A large cauldron sat over the fireplace spewing blue smoke into the air, books full of magic lined the walls, and the house smelled like dizzying fumes.  
  
The witch pushed Mabel onto the couch, “Sit there for a moment, child.” She ordered. He saw Mabel try to get up, but the magic holding her wrists refused to budge. His own were allowing him to move, but he didn’t even know what to _try_ to do. If he tried to run, she’d just stop him again, and either way he wasn’t leaving without his sister. Maybe he could punch her? He could probably get one punch in, but it was unlikely he’d be able to do much of anything. If he didn’t knock her out, he’d probably make the situation worse.  
  
Dipper was too busy frantically going over possible escape plans to even notice the Witch was in front of him until she had grabbed his face with one hand, the other gripping his shoulder to keep him still.  
  
“H--hey! Let go of him!” Mabel shouted at the witch defensively, squirming to try to get to him. The woman paid her no mind.  
  
“Look at me, child,” she demanded. He flinched back, trying to look away, but for an old lady she had a strong grip. She observed his face for a moment, “You have good eyes. Were you the one who found the signs to the market?”  
  
He didn’t reply. She scowled at him, “Answer me boy. There is no point in keeping it silent.” She was hurting his shoulder again, and he hissed.  
  
“Y-yes.”  
  
“For someone with no training, you have a remarkable gift of sight,” the witch said, half talking to herself. She let go of him and stepped back to look him over a little more clearly. “Not a lot of strength. You-- What’s this?” She grabbed his wrist, looking at his right hand, staring at something he couldn’t see with a displeased snarl. “Blue flame.”  
  
_“I’ll be watching you.”_ A voice echoed in his head. He shivered, trying not to think about it now.  
  
“An active deal would lower your worth, but there are ways to disguise it. When did you make the deal, child?” She ordered. “And with whom?”  
  
“The… what? I have no idea what you’re talking about!”  
  
“You bear a mark of one who has made a deal with a demon. Which demon was it?”  
  
“Demon? What are you talking about?!” Mabel said, still glaring at the witch. “We never made any deals with a demon! The first magic-y thing we saw was the market!”  
  
The witch dropped Dipper’s wrist, to his relief. She wasn’t exactly gentle with them. “I see, something has claimed your memory.” She noted.  
  
“What?” Dipper stared at her. Claimed his memory? Did that mean something had made him forget?  
  
“I would rather know what demon’s magic I am dealing with, but it’s no matter.” She pushed Dipper towards the couch now. “Your eyes alone should be worth a deal, and twins are always useful, magic or not. Girl, stand up.”  
  
“What if I don’t wanna?” Mabel challenged.  
  
“Do not try my patience!” She yanked Mabel to her feet. Dipper grit his teeth to resist the urge to yell at her to get away from his sister. It obviously wouldn’t help.  
  
“Let me see… Oh, your power is even more vibrant than I thought. You’re like a star.” She said with satisfaction. “You will easily pay for my wares ten times over.” She reached over to take hold of Mabel’s chin, just like she’d done with Dipper. “And a pretty little thing you are. A few years and you’d be worth twice that.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Mabel didn’t get the implication, but Dipper did, straining against the magic binding him, seething, “That’s sick, lady! And at least five different kinds of illegal!”  
  
The witch shrugged, looking towards him. She didn’t notice Mabel lifting her hands slowly to the amulet at the woman’s neck, “You clearly lack experience with magic. The only rights anyone has is the ones they take.”  
  
At that moment, Mabel acted, snatching the glowing amulet and breaking the chain. The bindings shattered on both of them, and a blast of light blew the witch back into the wall.  
  
Dipper scrambled to his feet and to his sister’s side, “That was awesome, Mabel,” he told her with a relieved smile. A part of him still wanted to pummel the witch, as ineffective as it would be.  
  
“You brats… give me back my amulet! What are you doing?!” The witch wheezed, trying to get back up. Mabel gripped the amulet tightly, extending her other hand, knocking the witch back again.  
  
“Pretty sure we’re taking our rights, or whatever you said,” Dipper narrowed his eyes at the witch.  
  
“You kidnapped us and you want me to give you back your magic?” Mabel demanded. Her eyes now glowed eerily, like the witch, and it made the uncharacteristic glare all the more intimidating.  
  
“I don’t need it for all my magic! I’ve trained for years--” The witch’s hands began to glow green, but the light coming from Mabel seemed to simply snuff it out. The glow coated her, preventing her from moving. “RELEASE ME!”  
  
“I will once we’re far, far away from here!” Mabel turned abruptly to Dipper. He couldn’t help but gape at her. She glowed far more vibrantly than the witch ever had, her hair and skirt billowing out strangely, like she was underwater. She radiated power, and he could feel the warm energy in the air. “Come on Dipper. We’re going home.”  
  
He nodded faintly, not sure he could make talking work right now, and followed her to the front door. It took just a gesture for it to fly off its hinges, leaving their path out free.  
  
Dipper swallowed, “How are you doing that?”  
  
“I’m just thinking about it I guess.” Mabel shrugged. The glow began to fade away, except for coming from the amulet itself. “So where are we anyway?”  
  
“I don’t know, she could have teleported us anywhere. We’ll have to call mom, and--”  
  
“Wait, isn’t that the school right there?” Mabel pointed.  
  
Dipper stopped, staring. “... We’re like three blocks from home. Seriously? We lived three blocks from a crazy witch this whole time?”  
  
“Guess so! Come on,” she grabbed his hand, taking off down the street, pulling him along behind her. Her other hand kept the glowing amulet tucked to her chest.  
  
Dipper took the time to process everything that had just happened, letting his sister guide him home. A large part of him was panicking, his breathing coming in sharp gasps. They’d just been kidnapped by a witch and nearly sold to the fae. He tried to force his voice to stay steady when he spoke again a minute later, after getting his breathing under control. “How are you so calm?”  
  
“Oh, I’m completely terrified,” Mabel said in a far too cheerful voice. “But adrenaline hasn’t worn off yet! I’m totally having a meltdown when we get home.”  
  
“Right.” He gripped her hand tighter. “That was sure one heck of an experience... And now I guess we have a magic amulet.”  
  
“Yep! It’s really cool! You should try it when we get home.”  
  
“You’re still keeping the witch there though right?”  
  
“Yeah, probably can’t manage it for too much longer. She’s almost outta range, but I think we’re far enough she shouldn’t be able to catch us. Plus, y’know, I have the source of her power, so I don’t think she can do much to us.”  
  
“I can’t believe you literally stole a witch’s power source from under her nose.”  
  
“I know, right?” She laughed giddily. “That part was kind of fun, aside from the whole terrifying thing! Oh hey, we’re out of range, gotta let her go.” The amulet stopped glowing.

* * *

  
  
Their parents were out late tonight, so they locked the door behind them, heading straight to their shared bedroom.  
  
As she’d promised, Mabel plopped down on her bed as the adrenaline faded and everything hit her at once. She covered her face and just focused on breathing for a moment. Dipper sat down on her right, an arm around her shoulders. He was glad he’d done his freaking out on the way. It wouldn’t have been very productive to have both of them panicking at the same time.  
  
While Mabel calmed down, he let his thoughts drift over what the witch had said: she’d seen blue fire on his right hand.  
  
He lifted it up, inspecting the offending appendage, staring first at the back of his hand and then his palm; no fire that he could see. But when he shut his eyes he thought about one of the more frequent of his nightmares: about blue fire dancing over his skin as he shook hands with--  
  
Something. Something he couldn’t remember.  
  
The witch had said something about memories.  
  
Beside him, Mabel finally she lowered her hands, “Hey, Dipper?”  
  
“Yeah, Mabel?” He said, without lifting his gaze from his hand.  
  
“She said something claimed our memories. Do you know what she was talking about?” He could feel her eyes on him, expecting him to have an answer, like he usually did when she didn’t know something.  
  
He didn’t have a real answer. Only more questions. “I don’t know. I’ve had this feeling like I’ve forgotten something important all year. I think it might be related to the nightmares. I know it sounds nuts…” He sighed, rubbing his forehead tiredly with the hand he had been staring at so intently.  
  
“It does sound nuts.” Mabel said quietly. “I guess I’m nuts too then, cause I’ve been thinking the same thing all year.”  
  
“You have? Why didn’t you say anything?”  
  
“Well why didn’t _you_ say anything?” She shot right back. Both of them were quiet for a minute afterwards, before Dipper remembered what had happened at lunch time.  
  
“Hey, do you still have that painting?”  
  
“It was in my backpack,” she pulled her bag off her shoulders and unzipped it. “Why?”  
  
“Because I think you were painting something that was in one of my dreams, and I want to find out why.” He took the painting from her when it was offered, staring at it as if daring it to divulge its secrets. “Mabel, did you have anything in mind when you were painting this?”  
  
“It’s a portal to the universe,” she said instantly. He stared at her.  
  
“That’s… really specific.” He frowned at it. Now that she mentioned it, he could see it did appear to be a device of some sort, at least.  
  
“It was just what came to mind, y’know? I’ve drawn it a bunch since last summer.”  
  
If this one thing she’d drawn was in Dipper’s dream, maybe something else was too. “Mabel, I need to see all the drawings you’ve done since we got back.”  
  
“Okay.” She didn’t seem terribly surprised, and he had a feeling she’d come to the same conclusion from the other angle. Mabel pulled her sketchbooks out, stacking them up beside him before she spread her portfolio pieces out over the floor. Dipper stared at each one.  
  
Scattered here and there were her usual meaningless doodles, but most of them looked familiar. There were multiple of what they'd dubbed a portal, as well as a little gnome, a drawing of Soos, of Wendy, Grunkle Stan. There was even a drawing of Pacifica Northwest, a girl he dimly recalled as having insulted Mabel in Gravity Falls. And a weird little pudgy boy with big hair that Dipper disliked instantly. The boy's page was labeled 'bleh'.  
  
There was a pterodactyl, some big hairy creature he couldn’t identify, elves, fairies, something resembling the loch ness monster, a zombie, and more things that looked like they came out of a book of magical creatures.  
  
Mabel had always liked drawing unicorns and fairies, but this was a bit much even for her, and very few of them were the cute, silly kinds she usually drew.  
  
"For some reason I keep drawing this triangle guy." Mabel said, and Dipper followed where she was pointing.  
  
"Triangle guy? I don't see any triangle--" He stopped. He swore he'd been looking there before, but somehow he hadn't registered until she pointed it out.  
  
A triangle, with a hat, bowtie, and a single eye, little arms and legs extending out. Dipper shivered, trying to look away from its papery gaze, but he saw only another one on another page.  
  
They were everywhere. It was like he'd blanked over them until she’d pointed the first one out. The triangle wasn’t just on its own pages, but scribbled in margins on the corners, hidden in other drawings in the background. Almost everywhere he turned, he saw that singular eye with a slitted pupil.  
  
"That's really creepy Mabel. Why did you draw him on _everything?_ " He did not voice the 'and why couldn't I see him until just now?'  
  
"I don't know. I feel like he's important." She didn’t seem as weirded out by the triangle as him, but frowned at it regardless.  
  
Dipper picked up one of the drawings. This one had a weird circle in it, surrounded by symbols. Two of them were the shooting star and the pine tree Mabel had drawn in his yearbook.  
  
"What are these?"  
  
"Idunno." She shrugged. She’d picked up a pencil again and had started doodling absently in her sketchbook. Dipper set down the drawing to picked up one of her other ones, flipping through. On most of the pages he could see the weird triangle man looming out at him.  
  
He glanced over at Mabel, who was barely paying attention to what she was drawing, humming lightly to herself. He wasn’t sure what the lines on the paper meant yet, as she was still in the early stages of the sketch. He looked back at the picture of the triangle man, leaning back against the bed to stare into its single, slitted eye.  
  
_“Then it’s a deal, Dipper Pines. I’ll be watching you.”_  
  
Dipper jumped back, banging his head on the bedpost with a tiny squeak of alarm and pain. He glared at the triangle while he rubbed the bump, like it was personally responsible for his pain. He felt like it was laughing at him even though it had no mouth.  
  
And, you know, was made of paper.  
  
Mabel was still humming, and she didn’t seem to notice when he scooted over to take another look at what she was drawing. Something fluttered to the ground as he moved; he looked down to see the paper from earlier today had fallen from his pocket. As he unfolded it, something clicked.  
  
It wasn’t ‘doodling with letters’ as Mabel called it. It was a code.  
  
Dipper was on his feet in moments, rushing to pull his cryptography books from under his bed. He opened them to the pages he needed and smoothed out the folded paper, “Okay… Not abtash for sure…” he mumbled as he checked the book, “Caesar maybe... ?” He checked the first few words, finding nothing conclusive. “Maybe it’s a vigenere, but what’s the key word?”  
  
Frustrated, he leaned back, looking around the room to see if anything would give him an idea, when he caught sight of Mabel again. She still hadn’t moved from her drawing.  
  
That wasn’t too unusual, but even with her humming she was unusually quiet and unusually still. Usually she’d start chatting if he was in the room, or change positions or roll around on her bed to get comfortable. She just sat there and drew, like she was thoroughly lost in thought. He cleared his throat and said, “Hey, Mabel?”  
  
No response. He waved a hand between her eyes and the sketchbook; she didn’t even blink. It was like she was in some kind of trance.  
  
“Okay, you’re freaking me out now Mabel, quit it.” Dipper said nervously, before he glanced down. She was still drawing, but she’d completed enough for him to make out what it was. The Mystery Shack, where he and Mabel had spent their summer in Gravity Falls. She was shading in some grass.  
  
Dipper grabbed her hand to stop her from drawing any more, catching sight of something that didn’t belong. Mabel finally blinked and looked up. “What?” She asked, confused.  
  
“Okay, first of all, you just spent like an hour in a creepy trance. Second, look,” he pointed.  
  
Written in the area she’d been about to shade were the words ‘Don’t forget’.  
  
“... Did I write that?” She said, perplexed. “I don’t remember writing that.”  
  
“Well I didn’t remember writing this code either, but I did and I think it has something to do with…” Dipper trailed off. It was barely visible under the pencil, but there was a tiny drawing of a key beside the word. “Hold on.” He scrambled over to his cipher books. “It can’t be -- can it?”  
  
“What can’t be?” Mabel put down her sketchbook. She looked over his shoulder as Dipper scrambled to write, checking the code book every few seconds.  
  
Dipper muttered under his breath as he decoded each letter and looked back. For the first time, the decoded letters were starting to form words. “That’s it. That’s the key to this code, Mabel.”  
  
“Your gibberish word-doodles?” She raised an eyebrow.  
  
“It wasn’t gibberish, Mabel, it was a code! One I wrote down without remembering and one you had the key for!” He shook his head and kept working on the code. Mabel watched as the words formed out of the gibberish.  
  
“... You seriously didn’t write that down on purpose?” Mabel asked, frowning at the near completed sentence.  
  
“No! I didn’t! I think it was me trying to tell myself something.”  
  
They sat in silence as Dipper decoded letter after letter, before he finally sat back to read the completed translation aloud: “HE is watching, but there is no other option. You have to remember before it is too late.”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading Chapter One of Starting At The End! Hopefully you enjoyed it. Please tell me what you like or didn't like about it! I appreciate constructive criticism. This is the first fanfiction I've written in a very long while, so I'm sorry for any mistakes. Also, if I missed any tags at any point, please let me know and I'll add them right away!
> 
> This is intended to be a pretty long fic, and there will be lots of ciphers and puzzles to solve along the way. Not all of them will be so easy as the one in this chapter, and some of them may not reveal keys for several chapters down the line. 
> 
> So I hope you enjoyed and will continue this story about close siblings, mystery, magic, and probably some horror.


	2. Return

There was a long silence after Dipper read the translated cryptogram aloud. It was broken when Mabel nudged him. “That is some crazy paranoid conspiracy junk you just did.” She said in awe.  
  
"Do you really think I'm just being paranoid?" He said with a sinking heart. She'd actually been going along with it all until then and it had been... Well, it had been nice to have her believe him, sort of assuring him he wasn't being ridiculous.  
  
Mabel shook her head, "Just ‘cause you're paranoid doesn't mean you aren't right this time," she said. "I mean, we just escaped a _witch_. So someone or something erased our memories of some important stuff, you're writing codes to help yourself remember, and I'm drawing,” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “Now what? What do we do now?"  
  
Dipper exhaled slowly, leaning forward to rub his temples, exhausted. It had been a really, really long day. He took a moment to think about his answer and said, "We try to remember, like the cryptogram said. I'm willing to bet that whatever's going on has to do with Gravity Falls. That's when this all started. When we got home from the summer.” He meant to go on, but they heard the front door open downstairs and their mom’s voice calling up.  
  
"Dipper, Mabel, we're home! Dinner will be ready in half an hour!"  
  
"Kay, mom!" Mabel called back. She looked back at Dipper and lowered her voice again, "Are we gonna tell them about the whole kidnapping thing?"  
  
"If we did, they wouldn't let us go back to Gravity Falls. Mom and dad wouldn't believe us anyway." Dipper took a deep breath. "We can't tell anyone. We're gonna keep it a secret, okay?" He was prepared for her to argue; Mabel despised lying. To Dipper’s immense surprise, Mabel just nodded.  
  
"Okay." She said. Dipper stared at her, eyebrow raised. "What?"  
  
"You hate keeping secrets. I was expecting--"  
  
She rolled her eyes, cutting him off before he could finish, "I'm not _totally_ hopeless Dipper. You're right, mom and dad would completely freak and we wouldn't be allowed to go back to Gravity Falls. I can keep a secret.” As she spoke, she dug under her bed for the pink, sticker-covered box that housed her jewelry supplies. Dipper fell silent to watch her pull out a strong chain and replace the broken one of the witch’s amulet.  
  
“What are you going to do with that?” Dipper asked. Mabel tugged on the chain several times to make sure it would hold.  
  
“I’m keeping it, duh. I want to be ready if we come across any more crazy old witches.”  
  
“You said I could try it,” Dipper reminded her. He tried to sound casual, but he was incredibly eager to see if he could do magic-- _real magic_ \-- as well.  
  
“Sure thing brobro!” She handed it over to him. “Knock yourself out!”  
  
He turned it over in his palm, staring at the bright blue gem in the middle. Mabel had made it look so easy, but he had no idea how to activate this thing. He took a deep breath, focusing; he’d do something small first, like levitate his pencil. He concentrated on it, trying to imagine it rising off the ground.  
  
The gem sluggishly began to glow, and the eraser side of the pencil began to lift up, the whole thing shaking. It got about an inch off the ground before the amulet stopped glowing and it fell back down.  
  
“I didn’t break it did I?” Dipper asked cautiously, holding the amulet farther from his body as if he was worried it would explode.  
  
Mabel placed her fingers over it, but left it resting in his hand, “No, you’re just overthinking it,” she said. Blue light streamed between her fingers, sending a warmth through his palm and up his arm. The pencil floated up without hesitation, then began to spin and weave its way gently through the air.  
  
“You make it look so easy,” Dipper said. He watched her face; her face was relaxed, but her eyes followed the pencil. “It’s like you just know how to use it.”  
  
“I do,” she said with a shrug. She extended her other hand; her drawings began to stack themselves neatly. “You don’t need to think, you just sort of feel it. It’s like,” she paused, considering how to put it into words for him. ”Like how you don’t need to think about how to breathe. I just _know_ how it works. Here, lemme show you.”  
  
The warmth from the gem grew, the glow traveling up both their arms until they were encompassed in it. For a moment, he felt the amulet’s power like she did, a pulse he could match his breathing to. It was like he’d always known how to use the amulet, even though he’d been struggling just seconds before.  
  
This time when he tried to levitate the pencil, it rose up easily, though still more slowly than when Mabel had done it.  
  
His sister took her hand away, and the moment was lost. The pencil dropped back to the ground, and the amulet stopped glowing. "See! You did it!"  
  
"I think it likes you better." Dipper joked, giving it back to her. Despite the jest, a part of him was jealous of how easily the pendant took to her.  
  
He couldn't dwell on it long though, because their parents called them down for dinner.

* * *

  
Morning found them on the back of a bus that would take them to Gravity Falls.  
  
Dipper was much more anxious about this trip than he’d been yesterday. If their memories of last summer weren’t trustworthy, then he didn’t know what to expect from Gravity Falls at all. He was sure that something had happened there-- something important. But he was also beginning to get the feeling that what had happened there was dangerous.  
  
Mabel didn’t seem bothered. She counted animals through the window until she got bored, then tried to get him to sing road trip songs. Dipper refused, but finally agreed to play I Spy with her when she started to poke him. She was bored of that within an hour and started to draw, to Dipper’s relief.  
  
While she drew he got out his notepad, tapping his pen on the paper impatiently. How had he written that code before? They were going to need more leads when they got to Gravity Falls.  
  
No matter how hard he glared at the paper, nothing came to mind. After fifteen minutes of this he sighed and looked over at Mabel, hoping to maybe get some sort of inspiration.  
  
No such luck. She was drawing penguins with fairy wings. Dipper rolled his eyes; he did not understand his sister sometimes. With a long, irritated sigh, he turned to stare out the window at the passing scenery instead. He tapped the pencil on his paper again, impatient.  
  
This was going to be a long, long bus ride.  
  
"Hey Dipper? What do you think we forgot in Gravity Falls?" Mabel asked suddenly, when the silence began to bother her. Dipper dragged his gaze away from the window to look at her.  
  
"If I knew that, it probably would mean I hadn't forgotten. That's sort of in the definition." He said flatly.  
  
Somehow, that made her laugh. "Oh come on Dipper, I know you. You totally have an idea. You like guessing at things. I bet you have a theory." She said with a big, braces-filled grin. It was impossible to avoid smiling back.  
  
"Okay, okay, yeah I have a few theories. Theory one: remember how that witch said I made a deal with a demon?" On instinct, he looked at his hand again. As it had been every time he checked, it was fire free.  
  
"Yeah, but that doesn't make sense. Why would you make a deal with a demon? That doesn't sound like it would ever end well, and you’re supposed to be the smart one!”  
  
He felt suddenly guilty. “I don’t know why I would make a deal with a demon, I don’t even remember doing it! I’m sure I had a good reason!” He faltered. “Not that I’m sure I even did. We just have the word of a crazy lady that kidnapped us and tried to sell us. She probably made a mistake.”  
  


Mabel seemed satisfied with that answer and went back to drawing. Dipper wished he was as good at convincing himself-- The rest of the trip he couldn’t stop wondering what kind of deal he might have made.

 

* * *

  
  
Grunkle Stan was waiting for them at the bus stop when they arrived. He was dressed just as Dipper remembered, in a well-tailored black suit with a fez bearing a weird symbol that made Dipper think of pacman. He greeted them with a grin, ruffling Mabel's hair first, then Dipper's, knocking his star hat askew.  
  
"Welcome back to Gravity Falls, kids! Bet you didn't miss this old dump!" He gave them a somewhat apologetic grin. Dipper shrugged, busy flattening his hat back over his hair. Mabel wasted little time in giving Grunkle Stan a hug.  
  
“We missed you too, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel said cheekily.  
  
Stan snorted, “Come on you little gremlins, let’s get back to the shack before Soos breaks anything in his excitement. He’s been looking forward to this all week, ya should’ve heard him!”  
  
Dipper smiled warmly at the thought of the big handyman, and said, "It'll be good to see him."  
  
"I'm just glad he'll stop asking about you. I swear, every day it's 'when are Dipper and Mabel coming back?' Or 'is it summer yet?' Like the guy can't just look at a calendar!"  
  
"Aww, that’s sweet. We missed Soos a lot too!"  
  
They piled the luggage into the car's trunk, and the two of them climbed into the back seat. Dipper stared at the passing scenery, half hoping he'd see something to jog his memory. There was the water tower, though it looked as if it had been replaced. The town itself had a number of subtle changes. A different wall, different roof-- a lot of different roofs, actually. Dipper wondered if there had been a bad storm or something. The people on the streets were all the same as he remembered, just as unassuming as ever.  
  
The Mystery Shack seemed to have been through some repairs since Dipper last saw it. Despite the newer roof and the occasional extra boards, though, it was still the same old banged up shack.  
  
Soos was out of the door almost before they had finished parking. He was grinning so widely that Dipper thought his face must hurt.  
  
“Hey man-- whoa!” Dipper’s greeting was interrupted with a bone-crushing hug that lifted him off the ground. “Missed you too man, but you’re kinda crushing me.”  
  
He laughed, setting him down to hug his sister instead, “Sorry dude. I’m just really excited to see you! Been way too quiet without you guys.”  
  
“It must have been awful to be without our total awesomeness. We’ll just have to make this a super-spectacular summer to make up for it.” Mabel giggled.  
  
“Heck yeah we will!” Soos agreed.

 

* * *

  
  
One thing that was definitely exactly as Dipper remembered was the mosquitoes. They seemed to swarm viciously every time he went outside. By the time their first day of vacation was over, Dipper counted twenty itchy bumps on his arms and legs. He hadn't even spent that much time outside. Mabel didn't seem to have been bitten. Or maybe it was just that she was too thrilled about the woods to notice. She acted as if the itchy grass and swarms of bugs were something to celebrate. She teased Dipper about being bad at nature.  
  
Soos ordered them pizza that night after they'd finished unpacking. Wendy showed up a few minutes late, giving Mabel a hug and affectionately messing up Dipper's hair, knocking his star emblazoned hat to the ground for the second time that day.  
  
She gave him a hug too after she was done making a mess of his hair. "Man, it's been so boring without you guys! Glad to have you back."  
  
"Good to see you too, Wendy." Dipper said. He fetched his hat from the ground and returned it to its place on his head. Cap secure, he turned his attention to actually looking at the older girl. She seemed shorter, or maybe he was taller, but she still had a good head on him. It took him a second to realize his old crush on her had faded. He hadn't even thought of it all year.  
  
"So Soos, do I get any of that welcome back pizza?" Wendy said teasingly. "Or is it Dipper-and-Mabel only pizza?"  
  
"I think we can make an exception for you." Mabel said.  
  
“It’s coming out of your pay.” Stan warned. Wendy rolled her eyes at him and started loading up her plate.  
  
Plate successfully full of pizza, Wendy reclined back on the counter, “So what’ve you guys been up to since you left?” She asked.  
  
“School,” Mabel made a face. “I’m sooooo glad summer is here and I don’t have to do any more math for a whole three months.”  
  
Wendy matched her expression, “I feel ya’ there. School is so lame. At least you guys are just in middle school and nobody’s going on about how you have a whole life plan by the time you’re a junior.”  
  
“What’s wrong with having a life plan?” Dipper asked a little defensively.  
  
Wendy snorted, “Dipper, the teenage years are meant for fun, not plans. You gotta live a little before the crushing responsibilities of adulthood bring you down. You’ve got the rest of your life to plan out that life.”  
  
“I--I guess so,” Dipper said dubiously.  
  
“Being an adult isn’t so bad Wendy,” Soos said optimistically. “Only the height and weight limits stop you from doing all the things you do as a kid! You just gotta own it, like Melody says!”  
  
“Oh yeah. How’s that dream girl of yours doing?” Mabel gave Soos teasing grin at the mention of his long-distance girlfriend.  
  
“She’s doing great!” Soos seemed to look twice as happy when he talked about his sweetheart, which was impressive considering he was one of the most jovial men Dipper had ever met. His whole face lit up with a huge smile. “She’s almost done with her classes for the summer so she’ll be back next week! Oh man, I can’t wait for her to get back. I actually have-- I have a date planned!”  
  
Mabel gasped dramatically and beamed at him. “You planned a date all on your own? Soos, I’m so proud of you!”  
  
“Yeah man, that’s great!” Dipper said, smiling at their older friend. “We knew you had it in you.”  
  
He looked very pleased with himself. “She didn’t want to go to Hoo-Ha Owl's Pizzamatronic Jamboree for some reason, so instead we’re gonna get dinner at that fancy restaurant, and then go hang out at the arcade!”  
  
“Mature romantic date _and_ fun lightheartedness. Sounds perfect for you two!” Mabel clapped her hands, giggling.  
  
Soos laughed, “Yeah, I’m getting way better at this dating thing. Funny thing though--” his expression turned thoughtful. “When I suggested Hoo-Ha’s, Melody said she didn’t want a repeat of our first date. But our first date was the movies. When I told her that, she totally insisted our first date was at Hoo-ha’s. Something about animatronics coming to life and trying to eat us?”  
  
“Weird, man. Maybe it’s just the stress from her finals getting to her,” Wendy said. “She probably had some sort of anxiety nightmare from studying too hard.”  
  
“Probably. All the more reason to make sure this date goes perfect! I want Melody to get to relax when she gets here,” Soos said, his face setting with determination. Mabel awwed at him, but Dipper tuned out her praise of Soos’s capabilities as a good boyfriend.    
  
Animatronics coming to life? Something about that seemed weirdly familiar.  “Are you sure you didn’t go to Hoo-ha’s?” Dipper finally said.  
  
Soos paused, “Well, I’m not sure-sure. Why? Do you remember me going to Hoo-ha’s?”  
  
“No, I just-- nevermind.” Dipper frowned, glancing over at Mabel. She seemed to have realized his train of thought and was staring at Soos thoughtfully.  
  
She was just opening her mouth to ask Soos a question when Stan interrupted.  
  
“Alright, there’ll be plenty of time to catch up later. You kids scarf down that pizza and head up to bed. Gotta be up early to open the shack.”  
  
Mabel pouted, doing her best pleading face, “But Grunkle Staaan, we just got here.”  
  
Dipper could see the resolve falter a little bit on their Grunkle’s face, but he managed to stay firm.  
  
“No butts except yours up the stairs,” he said. “I need to weaponize you kids being small and adorable to scam these suckers out of their money so you two gotta be up and rested.”  
  
Still pouting, Mabel finished up her pizza and went up to brush her teeth and change into her pyjamas with Dipper.  
  
“So,” she whispered to him as they scaled the stairs. “Do you think Soos’s memory was erased too?”  
  
“I think so,” he whispered back. “Wendy too, maybe even Stan. Who know how far this goes.”  
  
“Do you think they’d believe us if we told them?”  
  
_Trust no one._ A part of him said.  
  
“Probably not. Not without evidence anyway. It’s up to us.” Dipper decided.  
  
Mabel nodded. “Yeah! We can totally do it together! Mystery Twins?” She offered a fisbump.  
  
Dipper paused.  Something in that seemed familiar as well. “Mystery Twins,” he repeated, and lightly bumped his fist against hers.  
  


 

* * *

  
  
They brushed their teeth and changed into pyjamas before heading up to the attic bedroom. It was just as cluttered and shabby as they remembered it, though it looked like Soos had put fresh sheets and dusted and swept for them. Dipper didn’t quite feel like going to sleep yet, so he got out one of his books and sat down to read, not really paying attention to what Mabel was doing.  
  
He was just getting to the part of the book where the murder took place when he heard a thump from Mabel’s side of the room.  
  
"Darn it, it isn't here."  
  
"What isn't?" Dipper looked up from his book to see his sister emerge from under his bed. She got to her feet and brushed dust off her sweater.  
  
"My scrapbook from last summer. It wasn't with us when we got home. I thought maybe I left it here,” she scanned the room, hoping for some clue as to the book’s hiding place.  
  
Dipper quickly marked his place in his book and got up. “I didn’t even think of that!” He said, excited. “You obsess over scrapbooking! If we can find it we’ll have a record of basically every single day last summer!”  
  
“Exactly,” Mabel grinned at him. “And you always complain about it.”  
  
“Promise I’ll never make fun of your scrapbook again.” Dipper swore. “So where would you have left it?”  
  
“Probably in this room, but it isn’t here. Checked under both our beds, closet, between the beds and the wall,” she counted each location with her fingers as she made a mental list. “Cabinets, and most of the junk laying around. Doesn’t seem to be up here.”  
  
“So it’s probably somewhere in the shack. We just need to systematically search for it and we’ll find it eventually. Start with the living room and spread out from there.” Dipper said. He was already mentally making a plan for which areas to search first.  
  


* * *

  
They spent every hour that they weren’t working in Stan’s shop searching for the scrapbooks, with no success. Dipper hadn’t been able to force another code, and Mabel hadn’t drawn anything that seemed related to their search.  
  
By the end of the third day back in Gravity Falls, Dipper was starting to wonder if maybe they were wrong. If maybe this was just another crazy conspiracy theory, and it would turn out that their memories of the last summer really just were that bland. There was no evidence they could find that suggested anything strange had happened last summer.  
  
On the fourth morning, Grunkle Stan sent the two of them to wash his car. They lasted about five minutes before Mabel sprayed him with the hose. Dipper retaliated by tackling her, getting water all over her sweater and knocking the hose to the ground.  
  
Mabel managed to get the upper hand and pushed him off, making a grab for the hose. He tried to get to it before her, but froze.  
  
In the woods ahead of him, he thought he saw a little man with a pointed hat.  
  
Mabel snatched up the hose and was about to spray him with it again when she caught sight of his expression and whirled around to follow his gaze.  
  
"Is that a gnome?" She said.  
  
"Yeah. Yeah it is." Without thinking about it, he started towards the gnome rapidly disappearing into the trees. Mabel stopped just long enough to turn off the water before she sprinted after him.  
  
They lost sight of the gnome, but Dipper kept chasing it regardless. The woods got denser and darker the further they went, the trees twisting together in many places. They caught sight of the gnome again around the time that they spotted pale green luminous mushrooms.  
  
"Whoa..." Mabel breathed beside him. Dipper was privately impressed, but kept silent. They emerged a minute later into a small grove where five gnomes were talking. Four of them appeared to be quite old, with long white beards, while the last had a shorter, brown beard, and a face a little more like a young adult or teenager.  
  
The old gnomes hissed like a cat at the sight of the twins. The younger one blinked in surprise at them. “What are you guys doing here? I thought you left town!”  
  
“Left town? Wait, we met you before?” Confusion turned into zeal, and he took a few steps closer to the gnomes.  
  
“Met us before? Did you lose your marbles kid? What, did you forget about the whole Norman thing? The Gemulets?” The young gnome, who seemed to be a leader, frowned at them.  
  
Now that she thought about it, he did look pretty familiar to Mabel, but she couldn’t quite place it. “Actually, we really don’t remember,” she paused, thinking of how to word it. “Turns out something sort of erased most of our memories of last summer, so we actually have no idea what you’re talking about.”  
  
“Erased your--- you don’t remember me at all?” The gnome’s eyes widened, and all five of them turned to her. They seemed to be trying to figure out if she was lying or not.  
  
“Yeah, sorry. No idea.”  
  
There was a long pause, and then the leader gnome gave a hopeful smile, “Any chance you’ll be willing to be our queen then?”  
  
“Wait, what?” Dipper interrupted, eyes narrowing while Mabel attempted to process the words. “You want my sister to be your what?”  
  
The look the gnomes sent him was barely contained irritation, and they ignored him to address Mabel. “What d’you say, Mabel? Will you marry us?” The leader asked eagerly. “With you as our queen, the gnomes will rule this whole forest!”  
  
Mabel took a small step back, rather stunned by the sudden proposal, “What? No way! I don’t even know you guys!”  
  
“You don’t _remember_ knowing us but you actually dated me while we were disguised as a human!” The gnome hurried to clarify. “Come on. You’ll be an all-powerful fae queen, granted with immortality and protection from the calamities soon to befall this world! It’s a deal lots of people would kill for!”  
  
“I’m not marrying a bunch of gnomes! If I was gonna marry anyone it’d be a vampire or a mermaid.” Mabel said indignantly.  
  
The gnome whistled. Many footsteps could be heard in the forest around them, and dozens of gnomes stepped through the woods. Dipper inched nervously closer to Mabel. "I think we should really uh, be going now." Dipper said, keeping a wary eye on the gnomes hovering just out of reach.  
  
"I don't think so! Mabel, agree to marry us before we do something crazy! If you don't remember us, you don't remember how you defeated us last time!"  
  
"Like heck I'm marrying a bunch of jerks like you!" Mabel reached up and grabbed the amulet. Instantly, her body was covered in a glowing light like before.  
  
The gnome gasped and scampered, to Dipper's relief.

"Wh--where did you get that?!"  
  
"I took this off the last magic person who tried to kidnap us! And I'm _not_ afraid to use it on you!" She fixed them with a glare.  
  
Most of the gnomes scampered. The leader swallowed. "G--got it. No marriage. We'll uh-- we'll leave you two alone from now on."  
  
"You better." Dipper glared at them. His anger didn't have nearly the same effect, but it made him feel a lot better.  
  
The gnome leader started to back up. "Right, we'll just be going then--"  
  
"Wait!" Dipper said quickly. "We need information! You guys know stuff we don't about last summer! Do you have _any_ clues about what happened to make us lose our memories?”  
  
The gnomes were quiet for a moment, before the leader sighed. "Look. I wasn't really paying much attention to you two after you tricked us into doing your dirty work, aside from, y’know, that time I made you defeat the forest guardians and all that. But there was this group of humans who erased memories in the town. Something of the Blind Eye, don't remember the specifics. They haven't been doing much lately but maybe they were involved."  
  
"Blind eye," Dipper repeated, deciding not to ask about the forest guardians or tricking them just yet. Something about the words ‘blind eye’ seemed familiar, so he really hoped they were on the right track. "Got it. We'll check it out, thanks guys."  
  
"You'll leave the gnomes in peace now right?" The leader said with a scowl. "No more trying to trick us into marrying weird kids, or threatening us?"  
  
Mabel nodded, "Long as you leave us alone too and like, don't try to make me marry you again."  
  
"Deal."  
  


* * *

  
  
The first thing Dipper did when he got back to the shack was get out one of his blank notebooks and copy down the encrypted message from before, along with its key and translation. Underneath that he wrote 'Blind Eye' and then he turned the page. He had Mabel sketch out the gnomes at the top of the page, and then wrote underneath.  
  
"Gnomes," he wrote. "The first sign of the supernatural that we discovered in Gravity Falls. They claim we once tricked them, and they disguised themselves as a human to date Mabel last summer. For some reason they wanted to make her their queen. Weaknesses unknown, but they were afraid of Mabel's Amulet."  
  
"So what's all this for?" Mabel asked, using his shoulder as an armrest so she could look at what he was doing.  
  
Dipper shrugged her arm off his shoulder, giving her a quick glare that was met with a teasing grin. He rolled his eyes at her, but held up the notebook regardless to explain. “I’m keeping a record. Considering we already lost our memories once, I’m not gonna risk it happening again without backup. This way we can sort of pick up where we left off.”  
  
“Good idea,” Mabel sat down cross-legged beside him. "Sort of like a scrapbook!"  
  
Dipper blinked, then nodded. He'd been thinking more along the lines of a journal, but a scrapbook wasn't exactly wrong. "More or less. Little more book and a little less scrap though. Hopefully we won't lose these ones."  
  
He really wished they could find those scrapbooks. It was pretty weird, actually, for Mabel to lose them. While neither of them were the neatest people in the world, Mabel always took good care of her scrapbooks.  
  
_‘Maybe whatever took our memories took the scrapbook too.’_ Dipper thought, with a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. If whoever, or whatever erased their memories had taken the scrapbook, what was there to stop it from taking his notebook too?  
  
He hoped it was just lost somewhere besides the shack. Maybe she’d left it in the woods and didn’t remember where it was. That would make the chances of finding it were pretty slim, but at least if it was simply lost that meant he wouldn’t have to worry about his notebook being lost if they lost their memories of the summer again.  
  
“Hey, brobro,” Mabel’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts. “You remember what the gnomes said?”  
  
“What part?” He asked cautiously.  
  
“The part about offering ‘protection from the calamities soon to befall this world’,” Mabel said with a frown. “I was kinda distracted with saying no to marriage but now that I think about it, that sounds kinda freaky doomsdayish.”  
  
“Yeah,” his stomach churned uncomfortably at the thought. “They can't actually have meant an apocalypse, right?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the long, long delay. I promise I haven't forgotten about this fic. Real life just crashed my party, you know how it goes. 
> 
> Obviously, this is now much more AU since canon continued to thwart me, but hey, there are lots of AUs out there. Hopefully you'll still find this an entertaining story.


	3. Waterfall

It always amazed Dipper how Mabel’s art could go from cartoonish and silly to completely photorealistic with seemingly no effort. At least it made it a little easier to tell which drawings had to do with their memories and which didn’t.  
  
But only a little. He was pretty sure the girraffican-- a cross between a giraffe and a pelican --  was just something she made up, but he wasn’t too sure about the lepricorn. He flipped the page and paused, staring at the colour pencil drawing of a waterfall.  
  
There wasn’t anything that should have stood out about it, but the moment he looked at it, he felt a strange, tingly warmth run over his body, and he realized he both knew exactly where it was, and that there was a secret passage behind it. He had no memory of going _in_ to the secret passage, just that it existed. He was still staring when Mabel entered the room, toweling off her hair.  
  
“Shower’s free if you, y’know, wanna not be smelly and gross today.” Mabel teased, plopping down beside him.  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Dipper muttered distractedly. “Hey Mabel, do you remember drawing this?”  
  
“Um,” she hummed thoughtfully, a hand going to her chin. “I don’t think I do.  Is it related to the whole memory thing?” She inquired.  
  
A grin spread over his face, excited at the prospect of another clue. “I think it is! There’s a secret passage behind this waterfall, I know there is! I think it’s somewhere we’ve been last summer. If we find it, we might find another clue!”  
  
“Let’s go ask if Grunkle Stan will let us go to the lake today,” Mabel’s grin matched his. She bounded down the stairs to ask.

* * *

 

Luckily, Stan didn’t take a lot of convincing. He was busy making a new attraction and only spared a moment to look up and inform them that his boat was at the lake and Tate McGucket would let them use it, to wear lifejackets, and be back before dinner.  
  
The two of them ran back upstairs to get what they’d need for a trip to the lake.  
  
“Don’t forget to grab the sunscreen,” Mabel said as she dug through her bags for the grappling hook she’d gotten last summer. “We forgot last time and had to turn back.”  
  
“We did?” Dipper stopped in the middle of getting his notebook, turning to her. “I thought Stan had the sunscreen when we went fishing.”  
  
“Yeah but then we left with Soos and forgot it.” Mabel didn’t seem to realize what she’d said until a few seconds later. She went still. “Wait a second, when did we go with Soos?”  
  
She remembered the fishing trip. Stan had them put blindfolds on while he drove them to the lake. They’d been mortified at the idea of ten hours on a boat with Stan, and then--  
  
And then the next thing she remembered was being on Soos’s sinking boat, and Dipper asking Stan if there was room for the three of them on his. They spent the rest of the day fishing with him. She remembered the pictures they took.  
  
“Do you remember anything?” Dipper asked hopefully, seeing the thoughtful look on her face. She shook her head.  
  
“No. I’m not sure why I said it, since I don’t remember. But we came back and we were on Soos’s boat and it was sinking. So that means we left with Soos, right?” Mabel said.  
  
Dipper nodded, “That would make sense.” He hurriedly opened up his notebook and started writing, “Okay, so we have a gap in our memories from the fishing trip. All we know there is we were with Soos.”  
  
“And that we were on his boat, and his boat was all beat up and sinking. A big chunk of it had been torn off!” Mabel added. “Oh! And Soos was missing his shirt!”  
  
Those details were also added to the notebook. “Okay. That’s a good start. Come on, maybe the lake will jog our memory.”  
  
“You got it, bro-bro!”  
  
They finished getting what they needed. Mabel had grabbed a waterproof bag, just in case one of them fell in, and they put the grappling hook, notebook, sunscreen, and a couple of snacks and bottles of water into it.  
Once they were sure they had everything, they started walking towards the lake.  
  
“I really missed Gravity Falls.” Mabel commented as they entered the town proper. The lake was on the opposite side of the town from the Shack, which meant a trek straight through the middle of Gravity Falls. Luckily, the town was pretty small.  
  
"I did too." Dipper agreed, looking out over at the trees just visible past the buildings.  
  
Mabel turned her own attention back to the town. It hadn't changed since they left. Same shops, same streets, same people walking down the road. Some of them called out greetings to the twins, and Mabel waved and said hello back with a smile.  
  
They were just passing town square when they heard a voice call their names.  
  
"Dipper! Mabel! Nobody told me you were back!"  
  
The twins turned to see Pacifica Northwest rushing towards them. Mabel blinked, surprised by the friendly tone in Pacifica's voice, but she was never one to greet friendliness with hostility, so she gave the other girl a smile and said. "Hi Pacifica."  
  
Dipper was much less willing to play nice with the girl who had caused so much trouble for them. Even with the gaps in his summer memories, he remembered her insulting Mabel and humiliating her on Pioneer day. The blonde girl had just skidded to a halt when Dipper snapped:  
  
"What do you want, Pacifica? Come to try to humiliate us again? Insult our clothes because they don't cost thousands of dollars?"  
  
Mabel wasn't sure if she imagined it or not, but she thought she saw surprise on Pacifica's face. But it was gone in an instant and replaced with the more familiar, snobby glare.  
  
"Well they _are_ in poor taste. Isn't that the same vest from last summer?" Pacifica said haughtily, tossing her long blonde hair over her shoulder. "At least you changed out of that awful orange shirt. I was beginning to think you were too poor to have more than one set of clothes. Or too simple to plan out a new outfit."  
  
Dipper's cheeks burned with anger, and Mabel stepped in front of him, eyes narrowed.  
  
"Don't talk to my brother like that!"  
  
"He was the one who was rude to me for no reason. Whatever. Not like I care what you think."  
  
Pacifica turned and stalked away. Mabel thought she saw hurt on her face this time.  
  
She shook her head to clear it. What was she thinking? Pacifica didn't get offended by the kinds of things Dipper had said.  
  
"You _were_ kinda rude, Dipper." Mabel told him. "Pacifica seemed like she was gonna be nice."  
  
Dipper snorted, rolling his eyes. "Mabel, it's Pacifica. She's literally the most stuck up person I've ever met. I bet she was trying to lure us into a false sense of security so she could get a better chance to humiliate us. Like that girl in sixth grade who acted like your friend."  
  
Mabel made a face at the memory. "I guess you're right. But we could’ve at least found out if she remembered anything about last summer!”  
  
"No way, Mabel. We can’t tell anyone. We can’t trust anyone." Dipper said quickly, tone going serious worryingly fast. He grabbed her hand to start them back along the road towards the lake.  
  
His words earned a frown from Mabel. Something didn’t feel right. "Jeeze, that’s paranoid even for you!”  
  
“You saw what that code said! ‘He’ is watching. Whoever ‘He’ is. We’ve got to be careful.” Dipper’s grip tightened on her hand. She saw his eyes scan the area ahead of them, like he was worried something would jump out at them.  
  
Mabel stopped, tugging at Dipper’s hand to stop him as well. “Hey, Dipper, you need to calm down, okay? You’re acting super paranoid.”  
  
“I’m being careful,” Dipper insisted. “We need more information before we can talk to anyone about this. I don’t know what happened last summer, but if my nightmares have anything to do with it, this could be _extremely_ dangerous. We can’t trust _anyone_.”  
  
 A shiver ran down Mabel’s spine, though she wasn’t quite sure why. But she took a slow breath and met Dipper’s gaze head on. “You do trust me, though, don’t you?”  
  
Something flashed across his face, too quick for her to identify, but it was gone in an instant, replaced by sincere conviction. “Of course I trust you.”  
  
It was enough for Mabel. She smiled at him, giving his hand a little squeeze. “Good. Come on Dippin’ Sauce, we got a secret waterfall cave to explore!”

* * *

  
  
The waterfall looked just like Mabel’s drawing, and now that she was seeing it in person she could feel the same sort of certainty about the secret passage behind it. Beyond that, there was a sense of familiarity that was almost overwhelming. They pulled the boat up beside the waterfall, hoping to avoid flooding their boat with water, and climbed carefully along the jagged rocks through the gap between the falls and the cliff face.  
  
“I was right,” Dipper breathed, a jittery smile breaking over his face as they made it through the opening. The cave was rather spacious, with a shallow pool of water at the entrance that soaked through their shoes and socks instantly. “There really is a secret passageway. Can you believe it, Mabel?”  
  
No response.

  
Dipper turned to her, “Mabel?”  
  
She was staring around the cave, lost in thought. She _had_ been here, she was sure of it. The details swam in and out of her mind, like trying to pick up water with a sieve. She was startled out of her thoughts when Dipper touched her shoulder.  
  
“Mabel, are you okay?” Her brother’s face was filled with concern. She quickly gave him a reassuring smile.  
  
“I’m good. I just almost remembered something, that’s all. I’m _so_ close to remembering something but I can’t quite get it.”  
  
"Maybe we should look around some more." Dipper started searching the cave, stepping out of the shallow water and making a face when his shoes squelched with water. Mabel moved to the other side of the cave.  
  
"I wonder what we were doing back here." She said, looking around and joining him on dry land. Something hit her foot and clanked with a metallic sound.  
  
She knelt down and picked up the offending object. “Hey Dipper!” She called, turning it over in her hands. “I found this weird chunk of metal.”  
  
Her brother joined her, “Whoa.” His eyes grew wide and he took it from her hands to look more closely. “Look at that. It looks like someone covered it in a scale pattern.”  
  
“I think it’s part of something bigger, see?” Mabel pointed to the edge. “It’s like a panel of something.”  
  
“But a panel of what?” Dipper wondered. “What would have scales like this? A huge robot fish?”  
  
Something about that seemed familiar, but Mabel couldn’t quite place it. She instead turned her attention to the area again. “The dirt’s all pushed up here,” she noted, walking closer to the front of the shallow pool. A scrap of cloth caught her attention.  
  
It was the torn top half of a very large shirt. She could just make out a question mark on it.  
  
“Dipper, I found out where Soos’s shirt went!” She waved it in the air at him. “Look!”  
  
“So we _were_ here last summer.” Dipper took a deep breath and looked around. “That pile of dirt looks like something rammed into it. Maybe that’s what happened to the boat. Did we lose control of it or something?”  
  
No, that wasn’t right. They didn’t lose control of the boat. There was-- something. A very big something appeared in her mind, but it was fading quickly, like a dream.  
  
Without thinking, she’d grabbed Dipper’s notebook from the bag, along with the pen, and quickly started drawing.  
  
“Mabel, what are you--”  
  
“Shh! I just remembered what was chasing us!” Mabel sketched as fast as she could before the details could fade away. The more she got down on the paper, the more she found herself remembering, as if putting it on paper was tying it down in her mind.  
  
He moved beside her and watched over her arm as the image of a large aquatic creature with a long neck. A glance at the metal panel in his hands confirmed a sudden suspicion. “We were chased by a giant robot monster. What the heck? Who would _build_ something like that?”  
  
Mabel didn’t answer, too busy moving the pen across the paper, more focused on the image in her head than what her hand was doing. She didn’t realize when she stopped for a split second and abandoned what she had been drawing to draw a tiny key on the side and write _‘You can’t break what’s already broken’._  
  
But Dipper did see it. He gasped and grabbed the notebook out of her hands.  
  
“Huh?” Mabel blinked several times. It took her a second to collect herself. “Why’d you take the book from me?”  
  
“Because you wrote something again!” Dipper said, ecstatic to find another potential clue. He showed her the key. “It’s another key for a cipher!”  
  
She blinked, “But you didn’t write any more codes did you?”  
  
His face fell. “No, I didn’t. I haven’t been able to make myself do it again. I wish we knew what triggered it that first time! I was just zoning off and then next thing I knew there were words on the page.”  
  
“That’s what happened when I wrote the key too. I didn’t know I was doing it.” Mabel said. “It was kinda like the way our memories are-- I remember right before and right after but not actually writing it. Some of the drawings are like that too.”  
  
“So we can’t really rely on it.” Dipper sighed. “Well, at least we learned something and got a key. Let’s get back to the boat."  
  
The two of them climbed their way back across the rocks to the boat and began the long trip back to the shore. Dipper flipped through his notebook as they traveled across the lake.  
  
Even though they'd gotten a bit more information from this trip, he was still frustrated with their lack of knowledge or direction. And truthfully, he was frightened. The gnomes had mentioned a calamity to come and suggested that Mabel would be safe if she was their queen. And while his nightmares were unclear, he knew that they were bad.  
  
And then there was that code. _‘You have to remember before it is too late’_ it had said. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what would happen if they were too late.  
  
He was abruptly drawn out of his thoughts when Mabel said something. “What was that Mabel?”  
  
“The key is fractured.” She said. She wasn’t looking at him, instead staring out at one of the smaller islands on the lake with a glazed look on her face.  
  
Dipper shivered at the sight of that expression, but if this was related to their memories he had to know. “Key? What key?”  
  
She blinked, and the moment was lost. “Huh?”  
  
“Mabel, you were saying something about ‘the key is fractured’! What the heck was that?” Dipper asked urgently, a little scared now. Drawing things was one thing, but talking like that was outright creepy.  
  
“I don’t know, Dipper. I don’t remember saying anything.” She said apologetically.  
  
He sighed, turning the page in his notebook to write down what she’d said. “I don’t like this. It was like you were possessed.”  
  
“I don’t think it was bad though,” Mabel insisted. “I don’t remember but I feel like-- it was warm. I felt warm. I guess that doesn’t make any sense.”  
  
“It really doesn’t.” Dipper sighed. Something nagged at him. He was forgetting something again, but he didn’t know what. He was really starting to get tired of that feeling. “Let’s just get back home.”

* * *

  
  
The trip home was uneventful. They didn’t run into Pacifica again, or anyone else to stop them for a chat. Mabel was planning on calling Candy and Grenda tomorrow and arranging for a sleepover, to Dipper’s dismay. He tried briefly to talk her out of it, since it meant they wouldn’t be able to work on figuring out what happened to their memories, but she insisted on the sleepover with her friends. In the end it wasn’t worth it to argue.  
  
“You kids have fun at the lake?” Stan asked as he put down plates of food in front of them and sat down to have at the food himself. Waddles climbed into his lap, and Mabel looked hurt that the pig had gone to Stan instead of her. It made sense, though. Stan had to keep Waddles over the school year, since their parents wouldn’t let them have a pig.  
  
He didn’t miss the look and picked up the pig and set her down in her lap. “Leave me alone, ya dumb pig. That’s your owner there.”  
  
Waddles was happy enough to be fed from her plate instead, and the smile reappeared on Mabel’s face.  
  
“Anyway,” Stan grunted. “The lake?”  
  
“Oh, yeah.” Dipper hesitated. “The lake was fun. We just boated around a bit. Had some fond memories of the fishing trip.”  
  
Their great-uncle looked quite pleased. “After all that complaining you did?”  
  
“It was a lot of fun after all,” Mabel assured him.  
  
“Then you two up for going again when fishing season starts in a few days?” He asked hopefully.  
  
“Definitely,” Dipper nodded. Stan looked thrilled, and he gave them a huge grin. It made Dipper feel guilty for their previous refusal to go fishing, but they’d been so caught up in--  
  
His memories still ended there.  
  
They finished up dinner and the twins did dishes while Stan finished cleaning up the shop so it would be ready the next day.  
  
"Maybe we should ask Soos if he remembers what we did on the fishing trip." Mabel said as she washed a plate and handed it to him to dry and put away.  
  
_'Trust no one,'_ a part of him urged. He paused for a moment. It was only Soos. Surely if they could trust anyone else in Gravity Falls they could trust Soos?  
  
_'You don't know that. It could be anyone behind this.'_  
  
Except Mabel, Dipper thought. He could always trust Mabel. But it was too early to know if it was safe to tell Soos. Even if he wasn't behind it, he might let something slip at the wrong time. No, it was better to be safe and keep it to themselves.  
  
"Not yet. We still don't know what's going on." Dipper said, shaking his head.  
  
Mabel frowned. "It's just Soos. He's our friend." She argued. "I'm sure it's okay to talk to him about this."  
  
Dipper insisted, "But he might tell someone else. We don't know how far this memory erasure goes. Promise me you won't tell him for now?"  
  
Conflict spread over his sister's face. She trusted Soos, but she trusted Dipper more, and she didn't see too much harm in putting it off. Finally, she nodded. "Okay, I promise."  
  
"Thanks Mabel." He gave her a relieved smile. "I promise as soon as we've got a bit more information we'll ask him."  
  
She was satisfied with his promise and nodded, returning her attention to the dishes. Dipper went back to drying, trying to ignore the sudden uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

* * *

 

  
That night he dreamed of a red sky and smoke and screams. When he woke up he could only remember words that he had spoken:  
  
_"I don't know if you can hear me, but wherever you are, whatever happens, I'm going to find you."_  
  
He got out of bed, shivering despite the fairly warm summer air, and looked to his sister. He knew he'd been talking to her in his dream, or trying to. He had been scared, for himself and especially for her.  
  
With a shudder, Dipper went over to Mabel's bed. For a moment he fought with the urge to climb into bed with her like he had when he was a little kid after bad dreams. He'd never gone to his parents after nightmares. In his young, childish mind, his sister had been more than tough enough to fight off any monsters.  
  
These days he was significantly less convinced of Mabel's invincibility, but she still made him feel safe. After another moment's deliberation he got up and sat down against the side of her bed. He'd wake her up if he actually climbed in with her, and he wanted her to get enough rest.  
  
He shut his eyes and took several slow breaths, listening to Mabel breath behind him.  
  
Unconsciously, he matched his breathing to hers. Slowly, his trembling stopped, and he was able to think more clearly about his dream.  
  
This one wasn't as common as the others had been, but it was one that had built up in frequency over the year. This was the first time he remembered anything coherent from it, and the words worried him. Whatever had happened, he hadn’t been able to find Mabel, and they’d both been in danger.  
  
_‘If we keep following this, we might end up in danger like that again. We could get hurt. Mabel could get hurt.’_ He thought with a shudder. He felt strangely cold. With another shiver he got up and grabbed his blanket from his bed.  
  
He formed a sort of blanket cocoon, curled up against Mabel’s mattress with the notebook in his lap. He flipped through it absently. There were still only a few pages filled, and more gaps in their memories becoming apparent every day. The few things they did know painted a morbid picture, one he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to remember.  
  
Maybe they should forget about it and enjoy their summer. Just pretend nothing had even happened. Dipper found himself grabbing the edge of the first page of the notebook. He could rip it up, destroy the evidence, and in the morning he could tell Mabel that they were dropping the subject.  
  
Above his head, Mabel shifted in her sleep, mumbling something about dinosaurs, and Dipper froze. He let go of the page and leaned back, feeling even shakier than before. What was he thinking? They had to know about what happened in order to keep themselves safe. He couldn’t just pretend it hadn’t happened.  
  
Dipper took a deep breath and turned a few pages to the part where he’d taken notes on the cave behind the waterfall.  His eyes went wide.  
  
There was a code there that he didn’t remember writing. But it was in his handwriting, and the shade of blue ink definitely belonged to one of his pens.  
  
Mv’s vkszrj yf svhj di iwfm jxfgmql pow, uok ah yiiedyu llr. R srecexhwvd obhu gdseov uy wyoqp ettmvh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for how short this chapter came out. It felt right to end it there. I'll try to get the next chapter done soon! Hopefully it was an enjoyable read. Also, thanks to [Whatclaptrap](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Whatclaptrap/pseuds/Whatclaptrap) for proofreading. 
> 
> A huge thanks to everyone who's left kudos and comments. You have no idea how much your comments mean to me. See you next chapter!


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